Conformity Flashcards
1
Q
Define conformity
A
- A change in an individuals behaviour or attitudes in a group due to percieved or actual pressure from people or a group of people
2
Q
What was Aschs base line procedure?
A
- Asch tested 123 men and gave them a standard line and three other comparison lines. One of the comparison lines was the same size as the comparison line and participants and the answer was very clear.
3
Q
How many men were in Aschs base line study?
A
- 123
4
Q
What were the physical arrangements of Aschs study?
A
- The participants were tested in groups of 6 to 8 with one naive participant sitting at the end of the group
- All of the other participants were confederates
5
Q
What were Aschs baseline findings?
A
- The genuine participant conformed and gave the incorrect answer 36.8% of the time
- 25% of the participants never gave the wrong answer
6
Q
What were the three variables investigated by Asch?
A
- Group size
- Task difficulty
- Unanimity
7
Q
How did Asch change group size?
A
- Asch increased the number of confederates in each group to 1 to 15
8
Q
What were Aschs results when he changed group size?
A
- Asch found a curvilinear relationship between group size and conformity rates
- Conformity increased with gorup size but only to a point
- With three confederates, conformity rose to 31.8%
- After this, the presence of confederates made no difference and conformity rates levelled off
9
Q
How did Asch change unanimity?
A
- Asch introduced a dissenter who would disagree with the other confederates
10
Q
What were Asch’s results when he changed unanimity?
A
- The genuine participants conformed less often in the presence of a dissenter
- This was because the dissenter allowed the naive participant to behave independently. This remained true even when the dissenter disagreed with the genuine participant
11
Q
How did Asch change task difficulty?
A
- Asch increased the difficulty of the line - judging task by making the standard line and comparison lines more similar in length which made it harder for genuine participants
12
Q
How did task difficulty change Asch’s results?
A
- When task difficulty increased, confromity increased as it was unclear what the right answer was. Therefore explained by ISI, people conform
13
Q
What is the limitation of Aschs results? (g)
A
- One limitation is that Asch’s research was artificial. Participants may have known that they were in a research study and have gone along with it ( demand characteristics)
- Additionally Susan Fiske said that Aschs groups were not very groupy and therefore do not resemble groups in real life
- Therefore Aschs research can not be generalised to real life situations
14
Q
What was another limitation of Asch’s research? (A)
A
- Asch’s participants were all american men
- Neto researched that women may be more conformist, as they are concerned about social relationships and being accepted
- Additionally, the US is an individualist culture where people are more concerned with themselves. In cultures such as China, social groups are more important which means there conformity rates would be higher
- This shows that Aschs research does not tell us about conformity in women and other cultures
15
Q
What is a strength of Asch’s research?
A
- One strength is that there is support from other studies about task difficulty
- Todd Lucas et al (2006) asked participants hard and easy maths problems. Participants conformed more with harder maths problems which shows that task difficulty is a variable that affects conformity
Counterpoint = participants with higher confidence may conform less which shows that individual differences may influence conformity
